


Distance

by TnT6713



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Genderswap, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 06:37:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1041537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TnT6713/pseuds/TnT6713
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dis·tance (noun)</p>
<p>1. the extent or amount of space between two things, points, lines, etc.<br/>2. the state or fact of being apart in space, as of one thing from another; remoteness.<br/>3. the interval between two points of time; an extent of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distance

The pixelated, too-bright glow of your computer screen illuminates your otherwise dark bedroom, burning your retinas. You toss your grungy, scraggly blonde ponytail over your shoulder— because it’s in the way and it shouldn’t be in the god damn way— and rub at your eyes under triangular glasses with the heel of your hand, an exhausted groan rippling from somewhere deep in your throat. The bandages across your knuckles keep falling off; somewhere in the other room, you can hear Sawtooth rebuilding himself. All you want is to peel off this gritty tank top, sewn together with sweat and grime, and go to sleep wearing nothing but the tattoo on your upper arm and _her_. Thinking about it makes your muscles ache—but this smuppet video isn’t going to edit itself, and if you don’t post new videos, you won’t make commission, and you won’t be able to pay your bills, especially not the one keeping you alive. The literal cost of living has been getting steeper and steeper lately, and it’s getting harder and harder for you to keep up—though it’s not like the Batterwitch would mind if you dissolved. You think that’d be a nice, anticlimactic way to go: just break down in the ocean around your apartment like sugar in water. You wouldn’t do that to Roxy, though. He needs you too much.

You sigh, your eyes slipping closed, weighed down by the heaviness of sleep. This video isn’t getting done tonight, it just isn’t. You might as well just save it as a work in progress and go to bed. You’re no use like this, with lead bones and stiff muscles and orange eyes that won’t stay open.

Your calloused index finger hovers over your computer’s power button when Skype pops open with an incoming call from Jake, and, despite your tiredness, you manage a smile just at the sight of her name on your screen. It’s nice, knowing she’s thinking about you. It almost sends a tingling sort of warmth through your ribcage, not dissimilar to that feeling somewhere between tipsy and drunk. You feel like death, but still you click “Answer with Video.”

She fills your screen, all buck teeth and big eyes and thick, bushy braids. She smiles brightly at you, green shirt partially unbuttoned, revealing just the slightest hint of her collarbones. You miss kissing them, the feel of firm skin beneath your lips, _her_ skin beneath your lips. You miss her scent, like adrenaline and jungle air, but if you remember hard enough you can almost smell it now, filling your Texas apartment with five thousand-year-old Pacific breeze.

“The princess is awake,” she says, leaning too far into her webcam, so that your entire screen shows only what is between her thick, dark eyebrows and her thick, dark lips.

“Your shit is wrecked,” you grin, reveling in the warmth of an inside joke that probably wasn’t so funny back when you first said it. But it’s yours now, yours and hers, to keep and remember and neglect like far too expensive souvenirs. These memories are yours to keep and to mishandle, just as you are hers to keep and to mishandle from a distance.

_Distance_.

You’ve run through all the units, all the dimensions; counted the inches, miles, footsteps, days, months, eons between you and her, but no sundial or meter stick could ever accurately measure the beating of your hearts in tandem, the length of the invisible crimson string connecting your palm with hers, pulling you towards her often and away from her always. Distance. You have found yourself pressing your palm to your computer screen, wishing you could reach into the past and hold her, but everything you know about time tells you that if you reached into the past, you wouldn’t be there in the present to reach into the past, and your girl would be so lonely. You’d like to think you know a little something about being lonely.

“No, really,” she says, leaning back again, the same sliver of collarbone peeking out from behind the emerald curtain to say hello. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

You look at the clock, ticking up, up, up in the corner of your screen—pulling you away from her always. It’s late. You’re tired. You want to sleep. But you want her more.

“It’s only ten,” you tell her, as if she’s buying it.

“For me,” she replies, counting on her fingers, “but for you, it’s—Golly, Dirk, it’s three in the morning!”

You stifle a sigh, quirking your lips up into a weary half-smile. “I don’t want you to worry about me.”

Distance, noun.

She furrows her eyebrows, mouth momentarily opened to object, before averting her gaze, concentrating somewhere near her lap. She unconsciously chews her lower lip. Your bright eyes can’t help but to fixate on her lips.

“Hey, Dirk?”

-the extent or amount of space between two things, points, lines, people, etc.

“Yeah?”

“I miss you.”

She removes her glasses, wiping them on the hem of her shirt. You wait for the rest of the sentence, for the way she always forgets to bite her tongue when she’s so used to screaming. She can’t hold anything in, which is just as well, because you can’t hold her. But you’d like to.

The rest of the sentence doesn’t come.

She leaves it where it is, something her grandfather would never do, a treacherous cave not worth exploring further. Relationships are like ancient ruins: simultaneously stable and crumbling, ready to fall apart with the slightest pressure on the wrong brick. It could easily come tumbling down. You could easily come tumbling down.

She’s beautiful, you think, with blue light reflected onto her high cheekbones from the computer screen in front of her. She’s like something out of a fairytale, optimism perpetually dripping from her tongue onto yours.

-the state or fact of being apart in space, as of one thing from another; remoteness.

You place your palm against the screen of your laptop and watch her do the same, as if she can feel your warmth through the glass and the distance, as if you’re separated only by a screen. Sometimes you think that that might be sadder: always so close, but never able to touch. But then you think about loss. You have seen this girl and known this girl and held this girl; fallen asleep in her arms; given yourself to her in mind, body, spirit; felt her sharp collarbone beneath your lips. You know now what you cannot have. You miss her all the more. _Let me go back_ , you beg when you think no one can hear you. _Bring me back to her_.

-the interval between two points of time; an extent of time.

She smiles, all buck teeth and big eyes and thick, bushy braids.

You dream of her with a shotgun in her hand and adrenaline in her veins.

Distance.

It’s taken your remains and sewn them back together all wrong, your heart crooked in your chest, yearning for the half that didn’t make it back, the half she knows she keeps in her pocket for days when she needs it, days when she wishes she could kiss you hard and dissolve with you into the sea. You think that’d be a nice, anticlimactic way to go: melting into your girlfriend until you exist as one, a collection of ashes scattered across every universe, kissing and togetherness and a distance so small it spans lightyears but it spans those lightyears together, you and she, firm skin on lips and lips turned into dust, insignificant and everywhere.

If you took all the veins out of your body and laid them end to end, maybe your heartbeat would reach her, years below the sea, with miles to go between dream and sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Birthday fic for a friend. Really hope I got the characterization right. These two have been giving me hell, I swear.
> 
> Happy [belated] 17th, Dana
> 
> [also I'm really sorry it's so short]  
> [I promise I tried not to make it angsty]  
> [I'm not sure if I succeeded but I really did try]
> 
> Also I didn't bother changing the names to 'feminine' names because I don't think it's necessary. Also because most of the feminized versions of 'Dirk' I found were atrocious names and it really, really wasn't worth it.


End file.
